Rock Candy and Native Wines. 



20'i 



I hopo you will understand that I 

 make no objection to the use of sugar 

 in the must where required. It makes 

 a wholesome drink, the use of which 

 should be encouraged. If the culti- 

 vation of the sciippernong will place 

 such a beverage upon the table of every 

 man in the country eveiy day in the 

 year, distilled liquors will come to be 

 sold only as a medicine ; and the bene- 

 fits to the health, morals and business 

 of the country will be Incalculable. 

 The scuppernong is all that its friends 

 claim for it in the abstract. It is 

 healthy, and immensely productive, and 

 makes a good wine with sugar or spirits 

 — a wine which a man may enjoy and 

 desire to have plentifully. But why 

 claim supeieminence fur it compara- 

 tively? or, in advocacy of it, detract 

 from the merits of the wine grapes pro- 

 per ? Let each and all have their proper 

 places. Let us have all sorts of grapes, 

 and all sorts of beautiful drinks, to 

 drive from our social life the curse of 

 debauchery — for men will drink together 

 something, and ought to. But let us 

 keep in view the distinction between 

 pure and gallized wines, and aim at the 

 highest in our future experiments while 

 cultivating and enjoying the others. 

 And, so I may say with all my heart, 

 success to the scuppernong. 

 Respectfully 3'ours, 



John R. Eakin. 



Washington, Ark., January 24, 1850. 



[We clip th'i above v«ry sensible 

 article from the Southern Farmer ; but 

 while we acknowledge its sensibility, 

 from the author's stand point, we can 

 not agree with him in all he asserts. 

 That Mr. Longworth may have made 

 only so called jyure still wines, we 



readilj' believe. But at the same time, 

 he also made sparkling wine, and those 

 very people who drink and laud the 

 sparkling are, by a strange perversity 

 of nature, most effectually (or ineffec- 

 tually) down on gallizing, and call it 

 adulteration. Do they never consider 

 that their favorite sparkling contains 

 sugar added by the manufacturer, con- 

 sequentl}' not produced in the grape^ 

 to a much larger extent than those do 

 who gallize still wines ? Besides, spark- 

 ling wine contains carbonic acid gas, 

 developed by an unnatural process. 

 O Simon Pure Naturalist, where is 

 thy consistency ! 



That friend Eakin has made Catawba 

 wine of fine quality without the addi- 

 tion of sugar or water, and that it took 

 the premium at the Louisville Fair, we 

 can and do believe. ■ \Ye have made 

 such, and have taken first premiums 

 with it. But we have taken more first 

 premiums with gallized Catawba, and 

 we venture to assert, that Ameriean 

 wine making since that time (1857) 

 has immeasurably improved, and that 

 wines which took first premiums then, 

 would not do so now. The Catawba 

 has some of the inherent qualities of a 

 fine wine grape, but mixed up with 

 them are so many disagreeable ones, 

 which must be tempered and toned 

 down by the addition of water and 

 sugar to the must, that we here assert, 

 as our honest conviction based upon 

 long practice and experience, that no 

 pare juice Catawba, of the ver^^ best 

 vintages, can be as good or palatable 

 as a Catawba properly gallized. Let 

 any unbiased person but take a berrj' 

 of the Catawba when fully ripe, and 

 eat it; what does he find? The first 



